The skipping of a heartbeat awoke him with a start. Interdimensional travel was always hard on Pete. He looked around the small room and noticed the familiar hideous blue rugs that adorned the Wayfarer’s Inn of East Britain. “At least this dimension was somewhat familiar,” he thought quietly to himself.

Pete sat up on the lumpy well-worn bed and stretched his arms into the sky. He took a deep breath in through his nose. His heart immediately filled with regret as the sneezing fit began. The whites of his eyes now a deep red, the lids now moist and swollen. “Trammel!” He gasped.

A quick check into his pack revealed a few gold coins, his trusty and almost completely destroyed book of ninjitsu, and a couple bottles of weak poison that would serve to reduce the effects of the pollens of Trammel. He grabbed a bottle of the thin green liquid, and with the determination of a starved for attention frat boy, finished the concoction to the last drop.

Relief washed over him as he felt his stomach turn. The dose he ingested was likely enough to kill a lesser man, but Pete had become mostly immune to the effects of the noxious liquid over the years. Though likely psychosomatic, the poison also carried the benefit of relief from his dreadful allergies. Neither the placebo effect nor allergies had undergone much, if any, study by the alchemists of the time, but all Pete knew was that the effects of the poison were much more tolerable than the effects of the Trammel pollen.

Pete pushed a traveler aside as he rushed out the door of the Wayfarer toward the moongate. For the sake of his health, he had to get to Felucca! He acknowledged nobody as he ran through the busy streets of this new world until the familiar blue glow shimmered before him. He jumped into the gate without hesitation as thoughts of his home in Barter Town ran through his mind to guide him through the ethereal plane to the Minoccian woods.

His heart sank as he emerged in the familiar forest. His attention turned to the trees overhead, still green and full of life. “There must be some kind of mistake,” he murmured to himself as he crashed into the compacted dirt after his second attempt to jump through the gate.

As the dread subsided, the hunger set in. Knowing not the dangers of this world, he masterfully slipped into the shadows and began the short walk to Minoc. No gypsies… Okay… Strange… But Okay. Things began to look more familiar as he made his way through town towards The Barnacle Tavern on Minoc’s north side. “Just quickly swipe some bread and cheese,” Pete thought to himself.

He approached an unsuspecting waitress from behind and intentionally bumped her, the tray she was carrying crashing to the floor. His perfectly sure and nimble hands grabbed a hard loaf of bread and a small wedge of cheese before they hit the floor. He went to make a mad dash for the door but some mystical force stopped him… No… it couldn’t be. Fear again washed over him as he kindly, yet reluctantly, handed the waitress the bread and cheese. “My apologies,” he mumbled after finally and silently accepting his defeat. And it was right then and there that he did something he had not done as far back as he could remember. He marched up to the bar, placed down a few gold coins, and paid for a meal.

Upon finishing his meal, he made his way to the provisioner. Thinking he might be losing his mind, he spent a few more gold coins on a sextant. After securing the sextant in his pack, he raced to Barter Town.

The land north of Mt. Kendall, in most dimensions, contains a slum known as Barter Town. The inhabitants of the slum are mostly miners and lumberjacks, but if you know where to look, you will find a highly skilled band of thieves. But not here. Here Pete found mostly vast emptiness. He couldn’t believe it. He pulled the sextant from his pack and began to do whatever one does with a sextant to determine what facet one is on. “Felucca,” Pete said under his breath. He checked again. He checked a third time. “It… can’t… be.” But it was.

“What circle of Hell have I gotten myself into this time?” Pete asked himself. As he pulled the cork from the bottle of green goo and prepared to imbibe the gut-wrenching liquid a new feeling washed over him. A feeling of wonder, maybe even excitement. What kind of adventures could this land hold? How could he overcome this mystical force? As he stared at the empty bottle in his lap, “we’re going to need a lot of nightshade!” He exclaimed.